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Dead Island is a very interesting game. For every good thing i can say about it i could add a "but" to the next sentence. I'll start it off:

I picked it up when it first came out and have enjoyed it. But, if you are expecting it to be Left 4 Dead 3, do not buy it. This will not be the game for you. If L4D is a shooting spree and run and gun type game then this is a true survival horror story. While it is not particularly scary at any single time, it is extremely tense. You will not enjoy it the first time you walk into a sewer and your flashlight runs out of batteries. Or the first time your fighting a Thug(mini-boss) and your weapon decays so badly it falls apart in your hands.

First off, the graphics: at times stunning. The beach is particularly impressive, with the sunlight hitting off the waves. The hotel also gets points from me because it is a very creepy atmosphere. You regularly are walking through shadows with light only peaking past a spinning fan blade or angled out of a "foggy" window. So far, each area of this game has its own feel and look to it that is meant to import how bleak things are on the island.
The zombies themselves are a visual treat as well. While many might copy one another, you can tell that the developers put in alot of time on them. They look gruesome, look like they've been through hell, and generally look like they could be caught eating someone alive. Another bonus is the more you level up, the more the zombies change with you. I played with some friends online in a new game and fought against a Thug who was, while tall and broad, was skinny and dilapidated. When i fight against the same kind of zombie in my real game, at level 27, they are jacked and muscular and took ALOT of swings just to cut off an arm(another bonus, it shows the arm/leg/neck that you are aiming for in various stages of being chopped up). BUT, the graphics on other survivors is sad. Facial animation is crap and they really just look poorly done. The voice acting is absolutely awful and completely stereotypical. For a game that successfully reminds you that this is the end of days, it really drops the ball on other survivors living through the experience.

Gameplay itself is great. Melee is the focus of this game. You have to get in the face of a zombie to take it out. Its bloody and hectic fun. Early in the game you will literally be using anything you can find to defend yourself. Find an oar from a boat? Bash a zombie. Kitchen knife laying around? Stab. Pipe on the outside of a house? Rip it off and use it to attack. Keep in mind, the more you use a weapon the more it decays. Visual as well as practically. Ive grabbed a stick and after pounding a group of zombies to death it looked cracked and broken. Later in the game when you start coming across actual weapons(machette's, baseball bats, a surprising amount of sickles), the game shifts its focus from getting the best weapon possible to upgrading your favorite weapon as much as possible. By finding and using workbenches you can do straight up stuff like upgrade damage and repair decay, to more advanced things like hooking a wire and battery up to your weapon to electrocute zombies as you swing it. Due to the upgrade system everything you pick up will be useful at some point in time.
Guns are few and far between, as it should be. While it is possible to find guns from exploring, you mainly get them when you run across a gang or group of thieves(looters). Even when you get them they arent that practical against zombies. Unlike other zombie games, if you shoot them in the head they wont just drop. Now that being said, if you swing a blade at their neck, alot of the time it will be an instant kill. Also, guns will instantly kill other humans if you shoot them in the head.

Exploration is a huge part of this game. This is a paradise resort gone bad and it begs to be explored. The more you look around the island the more you will be rewarded. There are groups of survivors hidden in pockets of the map that can give you more quests and rewards. There are vehicles and bunkers hidden around to help you travel or heal up. And, of course, there are weapons and weapon scripts(for weapon upgrades) hidden all over the place. 2 examples that come to mind: once when fighting looters in a foot mart i had a lull between fights as they set up an ambush spot further into the store. Instead of just charging in, i decided to look around(to be truthful, mainly for ammo and health). While walking down a out of the way aisle, i found a shotgun(at that point was non-existent in my game). Another, when helping a survivor get the a safe house, i was able to find a high damage revolver in an out of the way alley.

While slaying zombies and exploring are the best about this game, the actual quests can be disappointing. There are alot of simple fetch quests or minor variations of what you were already doing. In the city part, ive run across 3 different groups of survivors....and had to run to the medicine store 3 times. Found a survivor at a radio station that needed help: first part was to run and start up 3 radio towers. Second part: run and start up 3 more radio towers along the coast. Third part: run and start up 3 radio towers around city hall. While there are some good missions that are genuinely entertaining and rewarding, for the most part you will be running from one place to the other. It can get tedious.

This is not a perfect game by any measure and there are a number of bugs. There are usual stuff (getting stuck, saves screwing up, etc) and some unsual stuff. Once i had walked into a new area, saved it and turned it off, only to turn the game back on and have a quest done. Now i got the experience and second part of the quest, but it still annoyed me not being able to play it. Another one: i once threw my best weapon into a zombie only to die. When i respawned i no longer had my weapon or was able to get it back. I've heard of game breaking bugs, in which people get "zoned" through a house. Because this game auto-saves, some people who got zoned through a house got saved inside it and had to start over.

To sum up: the best thing i can say about Dead Island is it feels like you are trying to survive the zombie apocalypse. And thats exactly what they were aiming for. Dying in Dead Island is relatively a minor affair, as you merely lose some cash(yes, capitalism lives on during the zombie outbreak) and respawn with full health. That being said, you will find yourself constantly healing and burning up rare med-packs trying to survive because it feels like you have to try and live through this thing. You can really forget that dying is not a big deal and that is a brilliant accomplishment by the developers.

I give it a 8.5 out of 10. If it seems like i dwelled to much on the negative, dont think that. This is a very good game and unique experience away from the plain "run and gun" type that this genre has been trending towards. I've left out alot(multiplayer, how your player gains skills and how it makes the game noticable different, the "Rage" skill that lets your run through groups of zombies), but wanted to get the basics out of the way. And, because each character the player can choose has his/her specific skills, there is a replay value to this game(not to mention playing it with other people, which can change the experience).

The more you put into this game the more you get from it. Ive put in +20 hours in my regular game and am only at 53% completed, meanwhile i played with some friends online and got 15% completed in roughly 3 hours. If youve wanted to try and live through a zombie outbreak, this could be your type of game. Hope this helps.